across the tundras of our skin
by any knight
Summary: this is a story about a family.


This is a story about a family, and how it falls apart.

Two people, a man and a woman, love each other very much and express their love for each other in different ways. It builds up like crazy, starts in their sophomore year of high school. He wants to be a cop, just like his dad, wants to make the world a safer place for his own family someday and leaves little notes in her locker and her textbooks. She's a creative soul, a pen and notebook always in hand, scribbling furiously down ideas that she has. She writes him poems and talks pretty words that makes him call her a pretentious author before kissing her quickly on the mouth.

As different as they are, their love is real and palpable and it all culminates in a little boy that they give a beautiful, but offbeat name. They're happy for a few years. He becomes sheriff of the county and she finishes her first manuscript between chasing around a toddler and trying to build a home and family without tearing her hair out.

As long as it takes to build up, a family takes a few moments to fracture and splinter before breaking permanently. This time? It comes in the form of a trip to the market on a Sunday to get coffee beans. She takes the jeep and she doesn't come back.

The boy cries because he misses her, and his own boy is too young to understand, but suddenly he feels all too hollow.

This is a story about growing up and how it's total bullshit.

At first, he goes by his real name, but kids start to make fun of him, so he hides the one thing his mom left with him and starts going by Stiles. He even tells his dad to call him that, which gets a funny look but isn't argued. He doesn't tell his dad about the teasing. Or anyone else, for that matter, because he doesn't have anyone to tell. He has nappy hair and the other kids don't like him much (which is okay because he doesn't like the other kids much either). Teachers call him antisocial, and his dad just accepts it because he figures it has to do with _her_ death.

There's this one girl, and she's totally cool, but Stiles is pretty sure she doesn't know he exists. In fourth grade, he starts keeping his hair short to get her to notice him and for her to be his friend, but she's too interested in telling the other boys to stop playing with her hair or poking her with their pencils to really pay attention. But it does draw the attention of another boy. Scott McCall is Stiles' first real friend, and his dad is relieved when Stiles asks if he can sleep over at the other boy's house and readily says yes.

They grow up together, and they're outcasts, but Stiles doesn't complain about it, because being outcasts together is better than being nothing at all. Even if Lydia still won't even look in his direction.

High school hits him like a ton of bricks right in the stomach. He gets taller, fills out a bit, and his skin clears up. When he looks in the mirror, he still sees an awkward little boy, though. Maybe a slightly more attractive one, but that's beside the point. He tries out for lacrosse because Scott does, even though he doesn't really care one way or the other. He makes second line, which his dad is stupidly proud of, but Stiles isn't one to harsh the mood or anything like that.

He starts joking around more, stops taking everything so seriously. For his sixteenth birthday, his father gets him a jeep, and Stiles doesn't remember a time that he's been happier.

Later, when his dad goes inside and goes to bed, Stiles creeps out to the driveway and slips inside the jeep and cries because it reminds him of his mom and if he focuses, he can see her in the passenger seat.

This is a story about werewolves, and how they're totally idiotic.

Scott gets bitten. There really isn't a way to put it gently. He gets bitten and turned into a monster, and suddenly, Stiles feels a lot like a babysitter. He starts joking around more, but nervously now; to compensate for what he lost and what continues to elude him. A beautiful girl with chestnut hair and killer dimples moves to town and Scott starts to push him away slightly.

Seeing Derek Hale for the first time in those woods is maybe the most terrifying and confusing experience of his life, because his stomach flips long after the other man is gone. He doesn't focus on it, because that's just uncharted territory.

Besides, he has Lydia, who has actually shot glances in his direction and even smiled a few times at him. Being locked up in a school with a person does that. As much as he sort of resents Allison for taking up Scott's time, he praises whatever god that might or might not exist for her blackmailing Lydia into going to the formal with him.

The evening goes as well as expected, ending with his date in the hospital, and Stiles is in a panic for the rest of the night and it takes nearly all of his courage not to run around town screaming. He isn't even a wolf of any kind, and every fiber in his body wants to scream or howl at the moon or something equally ridiculous.

Everything turns out okay, though. And a few weeks later, even Lydia survives. They start hanging out more, but it feels decidedly platonic on his part now, and she smiles at him like he's her best friend, really.

"You're delicate," she tells him simply once, in her quiet voice as she answers a problem from her math textbook. He doesn't respond verbally. He only looks at her and nods in agreement.

This is a story about being important and significant, even if it's hard sometimes.

So, being a total sidekick for around a year has its perks, but Stiles is tired of playing second fiddle to a guy that ditched him for his ridiculously pretty girlfriend. So, he starts hanging around Derek more when things start turning out to be okay (or as close as they can get in Beacon Hills), and Derek pretends to stand him.

They rebuild the Hale house, and it only takes a few months because Derek is a total freak like that. Stiles comes home every day that summer sore and aching for a shower, and if his dad is home, he'll just smile like he knows Stiles secret. And when the house is finished? It's incredible. It's huge, with flawless white trimming and smooth hardwood floors with a grand staircase. There isn't any furniture yet, so Derek just sits on the floor and sometimes, Stiles sits with him because he doesn't have anything better to do. Derek tells him that the house looks exactly like it did before the fire, and Stiles is quiet, because he knows that isn't his place. He can't bring himself to speak anyway, and he doesn't know why.

(When he tells Lydia about it, she smiles the same smile his dad gives him all the time and tells him that he'll figure it out eventually).

This is a story about loss and grief, and how it connects people.

Before junior year starts, Stiles visits the Hale house. Really, he should be getting rest for the first day of class, but it's like something calls him there. He lets himself in, because Derek doesn't bother locking the doors. Something about not believing in the idea of locked doors. Stiles thinks that he's stupid, because it was his open doors that got the house burned down in the first place.

Derek isn't there, but Stiles whistles lowly, and the werewolf is darting into the room from the woods through the window. He has a curious look on his face, not knowing what Stiles is doing there. Stiles opens his mouth to speak, but once again finds that he can't. Instead, his eyes dart around the room, and he runs a hand through his shortly cut hair and looks out the window and sees his jeep that looks exactly like his mother's.

He doesn't cry, shocking himself, when the tale of how he came into his mother's life and how she left his all too soon comes spilling from his mouth. Derek sits on his perch of the windowsill with a cocked head and a raised brow. But his eyes are soft and his tough guy act at that moment doesn't fool Stiles for a single moment.

He's breathing really panicky when he finishes, trying not to shed any tears, but then Derek just smiles at him and swallows.

"Sorry," Stiles apologizes, backing up towards the door, ready to leave now. "Shouldn't have told you that. I'll see you around." He mutters before turning.

Derek is all too quick, springing from the windowsill to blocking Stiles path before the young man has a chance to even turn around. Derek doesn't say anything, doesn't tell Stiles his own story, because Stiles already knows.

"Do you miss her?" Derek asks, and Stiles doesn't trust himself to talk, so he just cries. Really cries. For the first time in almost a year.

Derek actually hugs him, and Stiles appreciates that, how he knows not to say anything but a quick "I miss my mom too."

This is a story about a family, and how it comes together.

Stiles starts visiting the Hale house with it's unlocked doors more often, and starts leaving the window in his bedroom open just a crack. Stiles finds himself able to talk around Derek now, quite easily. He blabbers like he did with Scott before everything changed, and with Lydia after it did.

Lydia tells him plainly one afternoon that he's in love with Derek Hale, and Stiles doesn't believe her. But then his dad starts saying the same thing when he notices the stupid little notes that Derek leaves in Stiles' math textbook, helping him with problems because he knows that Stiles hates math more than anything in the world. Stiles chooses not to believe them.

Weeks later, it's Christmas, and it doesn't snow because they're in California, but Stiles wishes that it would. Everyone is at the Hale house celebrating, but Derek isn't at his own party. Stiles finds him upstairs, brooding and looking out the window. It reminds Stiles of the first day in the woods, and asks Derek what's wrong.

When Derek says that Christmas is Laura's birthday, Stiles does all he knows how; he is there, and he is real and significant, and he cares. Derek knows that all too well, and he turns and kisses him quickly. He receives it, even kisses back, and suddenly, Lydia and his dad don't sound so stupid.

For the first time in a long time, Stiles is not afraid because he knows that their love is real and palpable and it all culminates into this: notes left in math textbooks, a bedroom window cracked open ever so slightly, and the unlocked doors of the Hale house.

(Later, Stiles gets into his jeep to go home. He glances up and sees Derek smiling down at him from the bedroom window, and for the first time, the jeep feels like his. He looks at the passenger seat and sees that the shape of his mother that he had always seen had, of course, been in his head all along).


End file.
